to the bed, to curl up with her pain and misery and shut them all out, but she was too exhausted to drag herself there.
'Come on, my sweeting,' Gytha coaxed. 'I know you're worn out, but just let the bairn suckle, then you can sleep. He needs his mam's first milk. I'll help you hold him if you're afeared of dropping the mite.'
Gytha tried to push the mewling infant towards Elena, but she lifted her arm, warding him off as if he was a stick raised to beat her.
'Get him away from me,' she sobbed. 'I don't want him. I don't want to look at him.'
The women gasped and spat on their fingers to ward off the evil that would surely follow her words.
'That's a wicked thing to say,' her mother scolded, pinching Elena hard on the arm, as she used to do when Elena was a child and shamed her mother by misbehaving in front of the neighbours. 'Do you want to tempt the faerie folk to take him and leave you a changeling?'
She glanced over at the empty cradle into which Gyth had already laid a mistletoe twig and sprinkled salt to prevent the faeries from abducting the child.
'I do, I do, I want them to take him,' Elena wailed.
Her mother gasped in horror, crossing herself and moaning, 'Mary the Holy Mother and all the saints defend us. She doesn't know what she's saying'
Gytha rapped Elena sharply three times on the mouth. 'Don't speak so, they'll hear you and take him.'
Joan pursed her lips. 'I knew it! I knew she'd never make a good mother. I warned Athan, but did he listen? You should have heard some of the wicked things she was saying before the poor lamb was even born. It was enough to mark the babe in her belly for life. It's a wonder he hasn't come out with two heads and a tail.'
'She'll feel different when she feels the bairn pull on her teats,' a neighbour said soothingly. She patted Joan's shoulder as if to comfort her for the distress of having such an unnatural daughter-in-law.
Although the women had wiped the baby, Elena could still smell the stench of birth mucus and her own blood on him. They wouldn't wash him with water. Never wash a child's hands until he's a year old, else he'll not be able to gather any wealth. Joan had kept reminding her of that and a hundred more commandments besides in these past few months, as if that would somehow allay Elena's fears about the child she was carrying.
But nothing could do that. The mandrake had done all that Gytha promised. It had shown her the end of her dream, and she was certain now, as she had been for weeks, that she was destined to murder her own child.
Elena lay on the cold floor as Gytha scrubbed the blood and mucus from her thighs with a hank of straw.
Her mother-in-law came bustling back into the cottage carrying a small pestle. 'I've just been to tell my bees there's a new babe in the family. Now we must smear her paps with honey and butter. Should be the first thing the poor bairn tastes, so the bees'll lend him strength and sweeten his nature.'
Elena felt the front of her sodden shift being pulled open. She tried to push them away, but her mother firmly held her hands, as her mother-in-law roughly anointed her sore breasts with a sticky mess of honey and butter.
'Butter to bless him with good health. And honey to keep the poor mite from the faeries.' Joan shook her head grimly as she said it, as if the precaution would be quite unnecessary if Elena hadn't so wantonly tempted the evil ones.
They held Elena tightly so that she couldn't push the child away. She felt the tiny face held against her breast, the warmth of the cheek, the nuzzling, then the soft lips fastening on her nipple. The hot little mouth pulling at her sent waves first of pain then of pleasure through her, like Athan had done that very first night. She felt her body relaxing towards this tiny, warm little bundle pressing into her bare belly. She pulled her arms free and cradled her son in her arms, as her resolve not to touch him melted away like butter in the sun.
But even in that moment as she fell hopelessly in love with her precious baby, even then, she heard herself screaming, 'No, no, I